I was invited to come to Jack Dean's class for a couple of occasions to talk about what it is like to grow up as a Muslim in Indonesia. I decided to start from students' inquiries. First, I asked them what they already knew about Islam and Indonesia. Then I asked them to write down questions they had on Islam and Indonesia on a piece of paper. I collected the paper and then addressed the questions they had. We ended up having a very lively class discussion. There was a great variety of awareness about Islam. It was interesting for me to know that some students even had no idea what Islam was about. One particular student even genuinely thought that it could be a name of a food. What was encouraging for me was towards the end of every class session, students felt that there were many similarities between their religion and Islam, such as the tradition of charity, the prophets, places of worship, dietary, etc. I think that the sessions I spent in Jack's class was one of my most wonderful experiences in my residency.
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